Management

Feedback is a Mirror

You have an internal storyteller, and they are always telling you a story. Today the story is, “Almost done with all of my bugs. There were ten at the beginning of the week, but now I have two. One of them is hard, but I’ll figure it out. The other, I’m sure, will be a… more

May 6, 2021 2 Comments

You Are Going on a Quest

The most common conversation I’ve had during the last three start-ups was the growth conversation. Some version of: “Rands. I am here. How do I get there?” For leadership-minded engineers, there are four career paths available to you. I will describe three briefly, and then I’ll talk about the fourth one a lot. The first… more

March 14, 2021 1 Comment

The Metronome

Tick tock. Morning. Sit down at the desk. Hit the spacebar and wake up the displays. Calendar first. What is happening today, and how do I need to prepare? Any last-minute edits? Conflicts? New meeting additions to the day? Ok, which meetings are unfamiliar? Look at attendees—map names to the organizational chart. Assess political machinations.… more

October 12, 2020 2 Comments

Your Mid-Year Leadership Check-in

A satisfying aspect of the new book was I achieved the intended goal of providing actionable advice. After a brief introduction, I list the 30 specific practices you can start with today to improve different aspects of leadership. I then go onto to tell the story of how I discovered or refined that practice. The… more

July 26, 2020 3 Comments

Management via Worry and Crisis

Your manager has a default management mantra. You see it when they are not paying attention and a problem – large or small – presents itself. It’s the sound and shape of their first reaction. Their default reaction. And after a few months, everyone knows their mantra. Here are a couple of my least favorite… more

June 18, 2020 4 Comments

A Distributed Meeting Primer

As a leader who primarily values team health, I place great value on the weekly 1:1 because it’s where I assess health. It’s my highest bandwidth meeting, and historically the slight to significant lag omnipresent in video conferencing impeded that bandwidth. It stilted the conversation. The micro-second of lag was an omnipresent reminder of the… more

December 2, 2019 21 Comments

The Blue Tape List

We remodeled the downstairs of the house several years ago. Two rooms had walls moved to make way for additional rooms. Deep construction. Months of noise, plastic tarps, dust, and decisions. When they start applying the drywall, it starts to look like your house again, and you begin to hope for dustless silence. Drywall is… more

November 25, 2019 10 Comments

Spidey-Sense

You see James on the 8th-floor cafeteria. You haven’t seen him in weeks which is fine because while you’ve worked together for years, your paths are currently not intersecting. “Hey, James.” “Hey! Long-time, I was just thinking about you.” “Really, why?” “Randy just called you out in the launch meeting. He said the project was… more

July 23, 2019 3 Comments

Meetings Are Not For You

One of the challenges with writing a blog for a long time is it possible to repeat yourself. I’m not talking repetitious themes; I’m talking word for word writing pretty much the same article. Again. Meetings are on the brain again, so I quickly checked the Rands archives to make sure that I hadn’t already… more

April 15, 2019 5 Comments

How It’s Worked So Far

First job. Scotts Valley, California. Zero clarity what a manager did, but Rick seemed like a nice guy and he pointed me in the right direction. Mostly. Rick was demoted after we didn’t ship for three years and Linda showed up and OH MY a solid opening lesson in credible and effective leadership. Thanks Linda.… more

December 17, 2018 6 Comments